In sports, there are calculated moves and there are gambles. The first one mostly involves use of tested resources. Those with proven credential are given the responsibility of playing certain roles. The second leaves more to chance. Fine if they pay off, but there is no guarantee that they will.

The Indian team has come to the World Cup banking on a trial and error formula regarding the No 4 slot. There is no realistic expectation or high chance of success because none of the options have got adequate time to get accustomed to that role.

Five games into the competition and the results are showing. Three players have batted there and Virat Kohli’s team is yet to get a half-century from a position supposed to be occupied by a specialist batsman.

Sri Lanka and South Africa are the other teams to have endured this and they are seven and ninth on the table, respectively.

That India are better placed than those two doesn’t hide this inadequacy. It’s a pivotal position, where the primary role of the occupant is to consolidate and hold fort.

The requirement changes if a team gets big partnerships for the first two wickets and for India, the two times they have got something notable from this position were the occasions when Hardik Pandya batted there. His job in those two games was to accelerate when not many overs were remaining and he did his bit.

The worrying part is, thrice in the completion India needed their No 4 to play the holding game and on all three occasions, the returns were below par.

KL Rahul made 26 against South Africa, while Vijay Shankar couldn’t manage more than 29 and 14 against Afghanistan and West Indies. In the last two instances, Vijay got out when the team required the No 4 carry on in the company of Virat Kohli.

It’s easy to point a finger at Vijay. That would be unfair considering that the job has been thrust on him without checking whether he has the game to bat there at the highest level.

Primarily a batsman alright, he used be No 5 or 6 for Tamil Nadu not long ago and his inability to deliver at No 4 for India tells more about the lack of foresight of the team management. To be fair to him, Vijay failed in an unfamiliar role.

There is a bit of misfortune involved in this as well. Had Shikhar Dhawan not got injured, Rahul would probably have carried on at No 4 instead of opening. But even Rahul would have found himself doing a duty he had not done before.

In that sense, India’s Plan A was also based on trial and error. And when that is the case, it’s natural that Plan B or C wouldn’t be that sound either.

This is a reality the team has invited upon itself, by not grooming anyone for that role. Now that the time has to come to back this decision, banking on chance is the only way ahead. If the gamble doesn’t come off in a big match, the cascading effect it can have on the rest may prove costly.